I wish it were that easy. I'm just a little too old to go back to school again and break back into that industry. Besides, there's alot more work for PC-based crap, and I don't have to compete with near so many upstart kids.

I didn't say it would be easy or that you could make a living at it. Life isn't over until it is. Unless you're at 'death's door', you can still learn what you need to to be an Apple tech.

I'm 66 and semi-retired. After a long and satisfying career as an engineer and programmer, I'm still trying to learn new things and keep my skills up to-date (mostly as a hobby via online courses) to make a little cash on the side. It would be a lot easier to just 'kick back', but I enjoy the challenge.

Quote:

Originally Posted by the SASS Man

Wrong. IBM picked Microsoft, and dragged the industry into an architecture that was ultimately inferior to the Motorola-based designs Apple, Atari, and Commodore were spearheading. Only IBM's near-monopoly in the business world allowed the PC to even survive.

No one was 'dragged' or forced to buy what they did. Capitalism and competition is what it is. The fact that IBM had a 'leg up' in terms of size and money doesn't change how the marketplace works. Better technology doesn't guarantee a win in the marketplace and neither does price. IBM came up with a product that had mass market appeal (did what was needed at affordable prices) for businesses and consumers. IBM did ultimately pick Microsoft DOS, but it was not it's 1st choice for an OS. Other PC OSes (some I tried were better) were available to businesses and consumers for a few dollars more. Those businesses and consumers that chose Apple certainly paid a lot more. Apple focused on the high end of the market and managed to sell enough to survive. Atari, Commodore, and others focused on the low end of the market and didn't manage to sell enough to survive. At one point, while it was still a major part of the industry, IBM tried to introduce it's own OS. It also failed to earn a sufficient market share to survive.

As the kids say, "Don't hate the player, hate the game". If you want to enter the Apple technical world then focus on how you can do that, instead of on the obstacles to doing it.

Would you two get a room? This couldn't be more off topic, there's probably a lot of people like me who subscribed to this thread in hopes of getting news about winamp, not email alerts about the career choice pondering of complete strangers.

Is there anything us people in the public can do to help, Would donation funding help. I know a lot of DJ's in my area that have used winamp for years. I myself have used it since the Late 90's. I would gladly donate to the cause if it would do any good.

Actually, the call for it was already placed on the Winamp's FB some time ago. But I don't know what happened to it.. wasn't anyone showing up? No one was at that level? The payment was bad for the requirements? Someone got hired but is working on ShoutCAST?.. mistery..

I myself want to give more time for the new developement, because I know, it is not easy to work on the licenses for the codings etc. I can wait (like I have to wait also for myself, if I can escape from the darkness and loneliness some day).

BTW, my Winamp folder has now 1.78 GB, with currently 2609 Winamp Skins, 9288 Milkdrop Presets, 124 AVS Presets and 3284 images in the textures folder. But my Milkdrop2 folder has 22 subfolders, also for .jpg-files, which can be accessed by some of the Modern Skins (for Komodo they should have a good pixel resolution)...

When I say "Winamp Lead Dev", I mean someone already very familiar with the full codebase. It's not something you can learn overnight...
We had DrO, but not any more
Benski, Justin, Christophe, PP, Francis etc etc all have other jobs/commitments.

Other than that, we have a very stable 5.8 beta that we could release right now, but it's got no Queue/JTFE features, no CD Burning, and no Gracenote replacement (though 5.666 and earlier don't have working Gracenote features either).

Other than that, we have a very stable 5.8 beta that we could release right now, but it's got no Queue/JTFE features, no CD Burning, and no Gracenote replacement (though 5.666 and earlier don't have working Gracenote features either).

I think public beta is not so bad idea... 5.8 works great for me, had no issues long time.
For sure I miss some gracenote features, but maybe it should be released just to show You are working on Winamp.

DJ Egg, Are you guys working with the mac version as well or just trying to update the windows version first and then revert to the Mac. Thanks for the updates bro, I know I just joined but Ive been reading along for a good while now.

I know there might be lots of work to be done but last time I heard of Winamp you were committing changes from last stable to a new state before everything turned darker.

Yeah, I did all that a while ago. But for the last few weeks or so, it's just been stale/static, mainly due to the JTFE situation... and lack of a lead dev :-(

I could've released the beta if there'd just been no CD Burning, and still no working Gracenote features, but with those 2 and no Queue/JTFE features as well? Hmmm...

What I don't want is another Winamp3 situation where we get loads of negative feedback and people complaining about where's this/where's that, you suck, etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pawel

I think public beta is not so bad idea... 5.8 works great for me, had no issues long time.
For sure I miss some gracenote features, but maybe it should be released just to show You are working on Winamp.

Hope Benski will find some free time finally...

Yeah, but the last private internal build still had JTFE in, because I hadn't reached that point in the reversion/cherry-picking process yet, and JTFE removal was the last thing DrO committed.

Would you feel the same if I released 5.8 beta without JTFE, which also means no icon pack support etc?

Other than that, yeah, I obv. agree about Benski :-)

Quote:

Originally Posted by musicf8

Yeah, I personally don't see an issue with a "Beta" trial release since it's still much more full feature packed than the Winamp3 "alpha" release (and some of us remember how that all went)

Yes, I still have the occasional nightmare....
I don't need any more ;-)

Besides, I'm already depressed enough about the whole situation.....

Quote:

Originally Posted by dustinw251

DJ Egg, Are you guys working with the mac version as well or just trying to update the windows version first and then revert to the Mac. Thanks for the updates bro, I know I just joined but Ive been reading along for a good while now.

That is understandable, I will quit with the Questions now but even the windows version is greatly anticipated, Maybe your higher ups need to look sit back and listen to the voices from the public, yeah internet audio is great but winamp could be their selling point back to being the all in one solution that it always has been, I'll be patiently waiting for the pro version if any to come out credit card is ready but hey if you wanna keep giving it away I won't complain there either. Have a good evening and i will be reading along.

That is understandable, I will quit with the Questions now but even the windows version is greatly anticipated, Maybe your higher ups need to look sit back and listen to the voices from the public, yeah internet audio is great but winamp could be their selling point back to being the all in one solution that it always has been, I'll be patiently waiting for the pro version if any to come out credit card is ready but hey if you wanna keep giving it away I won't complain there either. Have a good evening and i will be reading along.

Thanks

You're welcome. Thanks!

There won't be a Pro version any more, btw, it'll be 100% freeware again.
It makes no sense to charge for things like mp4v, h.264 & aac+ playback and faster CD Ripping/Burning, when Windows 7/8/10 already include them for free. It made sense at the time when everyone was still using Windows 98/ME, 2000 & XP.

HE-AAC encoding is the only issue though, because Windows doesn't include a native encoder, and the license costs are way too high.
And yeah, users (if it's a first/clean install) will need to download lame_enc.dll (the MP3 encoder) separately, heh.

imo, the last poster is correct. CD burning is very unessential. i almost never used winamp for burning CDs, like ever. and its almost unneeded as a feature at all today anyway.

and as you pointed out, a new ver not having metadata lookup is no different than the current state of affairs.

so that leaves only JTFE as the hangup? really?

imo, JTFE is not that critical. yes, it has features to it i do use, but my feeling is this:

put out what you have ready, right now, today, but in a low key way. don't hype it, say its just a beta and so on. make clear that burning and metadata are not included, but will be eventually.

then get FEEDBACK! this is what you need. specifically, find out from the number of responses what is missing from JTFE that folks want back.

the point of this would be to figure out what parts of JTFE needed to be coded back in first. u could prioritize based on the feedback. and then you could build JTFE little by little, as u went. while i did use it, i probably only used like 5% of it.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and likewise a new winamp release doesn't have to have JTFE 100% complete to release a beta. in fact, imo, its better if it doesn't, b/c then u can get out something now, find out what features were most popular, and kill bugs as u go.

regardless of what u decide, i know many here appreciate everything you're doing, and wish the best for you, Benski, winamp, etc.

i absolutely understood your point, i just disagree that those 3 items matter that much, but thats ok, we can disagree. i fully understand that my POV is easy to have when you are the one who would have to suffer the blowback, if any.

for JTFE, i think something to do would be to start a new thread, and then just post screenshots of all its various dialogs in prefs. that should cover most, if not all, of its abilities.

But from my PoV, even if one person complains about one missing feature, it's negative feedback.
If potentially a ton of people complain about a load of missing features, it's even more negative feedback.

Even if the majority of users never used those missing features, there's the strong possibility that a minority (or more) did use them, and will complain if they are missing.

These are the lessons learned from the complaints received over WA3 and even the first release of Winamp 5.0 (which was missing the queue features of WA3).

I would prefer to avoid a repeat of any of that happening again.

Important Status Update

At the moment, we are hoping to release SHOUTcast DNAS 2.5 very shortly.
This is a highly important, key release.. in terms of revenue generation, amongst other things.

Once it's released, I will then be bringing up the Winamp problem with TPTB,and I will keep you all informed of any outcome/progress, to the best of my ability...

Maybe someone could post a list of ALL the features implemented by JTFE

....

Have heart, DJ Egg.

To post a comprehensive list of all the major and minor things JTFE provides would be too long for anyone to read. It was introduced in 2005 and has grown from a simple thing to the giant it is now. I'll just give some brief comments on 3 things and a summary.

1. Enhanced Jump to File features:
Some users don't use the media library and just keep all their files listed in the Playlist Editor. This ends up being a huge listing and the enhanced features allow for comprehensive Winamp query language searches to be performed on the items in this listing. The context menu associated with search results allow for several operations to be performed, including saving the results in special JTFE playlists for reuse later.

2. Queue and Queue Manager:
The Queue is arguably a better base for playback of files than the Playlist Editor, imo. The Queue Manager and the context menu associated with items placed in the Queue allow for several operations to be performed on them (all that is available in the PE and more), including switching playback to the PE or shutting down Winamp or the computer when the end of queue is reached. Items added to the Queue can be saved in special Queue playlists for reuse later. Queue operations can be selected during playback and/or default operations can be selected in the Winamp Preferences.

3. Enqueue & Play Windows Explorer context menu command:
The default context menu commands either let you add selected items to the end of the listing in the Playlist Editor or replace the items listed and start playback with the new items. The Enqueue & Play context command lets you add selected items to the end of the PE listing, after the currently playing item, or to the Queue. Playback can continue where it currently is, or with the items added to the PE listing, or with the items added to the Queue.

Those who are really interested in what JTFE provides should install it and then look thru the options shown in the Winamp Preferences associated with it. Some of these options are not only in the JTFE section. So you need to make a note of all the Winamp Preferences options, then disable the JTFE plug-in (shutdown Winamp, change it's extension from .dll to .off, and restart Winamp) and look thru the Winamp Preferences again for what is missing. This will take some time, but is the best way to see most of what JTFE 'brings to the table'. The JTFE changelog is also a long, but interesting, read (http://winampplugins.co.uk/jtfe_dev.html).

Select an item in the Playlist Editor and press the "J" key (with and without the JTFE plug-in enabled) and play around with the dialogs that open. One is quite limited in what it can do and one isn't. With the JTFE plug-in enabled, add a few files from the Playlist Editor listing to the Queue and then switch to the Queue Manager and play around with the operations that are available. Don't forget to right-click on stuff and explore the associated context menus.

Those who have JTFE installed and don't think they use it that much should disabled it and then try to use Winamp the way they normally do for a few days, to see if they miss anything.

If people have an issue with my decision to rescind allowing the JTFE plug-in being shipped in any Radionomy provided version then why haven't they asked me why I made the decision that I did.

As due to the ineptness of Radionomy's management to respond to my emails to prevent this all becoming an issue when "our collaboration" was ended plus comments from certain people decrying the ideas and work that had been partially started as "shit" (which I had to be told second-hand) and breaking terms of contract and trying not to pay 5 months of back pay (a recurring issue they have in not wanting to pay up for things and eventually took 4 months more to resolve), I think I'm more than entitled to exercise my rights as the owner of the plug-in (which is why it was the only one that shipped with Winamp that had a specific donate button on it's about page).

Plus if everything I've heard is correct about the mythical 'new' version, it just turns Winamp into a glorified WMP wrapper and if that's the best that can be done then I'm more than happy to have nothing to do with that version. As it's clearly offering nothing new (sorry Egg but that's the reality of it) which is what we were promised and is the lie that I was told that would able to be done with Radionomy taking ownership.

Anyway, that is all I have to say on here (I'm easily contactable from my websites and twitter, etc) and I fully expect this post to be deleted. Not that it really matters as this place seems to have gone to the dogs with so much stuff left unanswered, no development team or people just asking the same question over and over again. Radionomy really has screwed the pooch on this one haven't they...

You know me. I've got issues... issues with all that is wrong with the world and more....

Some of those things you mentioned happened after the event... and it sounds like someone's been doing a bit of poop-stirring too.

The issue was that after you were gone, we realised that some of the stuff you implemented was unfinished, and there were instability issues, so we (me & Benski) decided that the only way to address said issues (without your presence) was to revert and cherry-pick, and as a result, we now have a stable build.

Again, you know me, and if I thought anything was "shit" I would say so. I'm always one to speak my mind.
I did say to you (many moons ago now) that I wasn't too keen on the native implementation of the << | >> buttons in Alt+3, mainly because it was unfinished and the metadata wasn't updating in the pledit after saving changes, and hitting Enter wasn't working any more. I never said it was "shit", just that it was unfinished and there were related stability issues. I'm not entirely sure what anyone else has allegedly said, but I know that everyone who's worked on Winamp since you left has the utmost respect for you.

I obviously can't comment on whatever happened between you and Radionomy, because 1) I wasn't there, and 2) I don't even know the precise details.

But just to let you and everyone else know again, I was extremely affected & devastated by the news...I didn't think it was possible to be even more depressed than I already was....

It's not a glorified WMP wrapper, btw. It just uses the Windows Media Foundation h.264 & MP4v2 decoders (which were previously Pro-only features) and AAC decoder (via the same input plugins as before), because that's the only way we can legally make Winamp freeware again, and without having to pay millions for licenses. Note that OpenH264 doesn't currently support High Profile, so we couldn't use it.
Benski implemented those things, btw. But I've not heard from him for a while now, because he's busy with his job and RealLife TM

I really wish there was some way to resolve all these issues.
There's already enough problems in the world.

And no, your post(s) will not be deleted :-)

ps. I go off using social media (FB, Twitter, etc) more and more each day. I even stopped using AIM & IRC. Though I am on Slack (we invited you, but you never came), and occasionally Skype.

In my opinion it is not a problem that JTFE is not supported by Winamp 5.8. It is not a problem that some feature is missing now or not working... it all can be rewritten, added or just removed.
The problem is that it seems there is nobody that can add/repair this features! How can it be that for over 2 years new owner of Winamp did nothing (probably). Nothing...

@DrO
I am sure no one blame you for this situation. I think averybody understand You and accept your decision. Btw, it is not WMP wrapper - it is still best Media Player, now freeware, no patents!

@kzuse
5.8 could use JTFE, but first of all it is against DrO's decision and there is no one who could make it possible... no eta, no resources

So, lets hope there will be soon a lead developer and we will not discuss if but when we see a new Winamp version.

First off, i just wanna say, i've been a winamp user since day one. It is the only music player i've ever willingly installed. (I can remember cramming my mp3's onto a 120MB HDD too - yeah, that's right, megabytes...) I can't imagine not having it anymore. So maybe that makes me a bit biased...

But have you guys considered crowdfunding it? I mean, it obviously still has a heck of a following; perhaps it would be a good way to get a solid start?

It might show the corporate shills that there's still a lot of interest in the player.

All i gotta say, i've paid for the pro version more than once. And i'd *gladly* drop 100 bucks for a new, modern, all-the-bells-and-whistles WinAmp. And i'm just a guy who likes his music. I'm sure some professional DJ's out there would be willing to match me, or more.

Again, just a thought.

And a tip of the hat to those who have worked to keep it going. Seriously, it's the best damn music player ever written.

I was recently a bit pessimistic, so maybe something more optimistic now.
Such a reflection...
I mean, if people will still use Winamp like they do, if they still belive it will never die... I am glad there are still plenty of people who really cares and belive in better future...
Even if Radionomy will fail, there is still stable 5.666 build, that is actively supported by DrO.

I started to use Winamp long time ago (when i bought my first PC, I think it was in 1999). Winamp was the first Windows application I run
I still prefer to play music from my disk, not streaming. Winamp gives me everything I need. I am sure there are still plenty of You that feels the same.